What went down at Rage Art, the Tekken 7 launch tournament

For almost an entire day, the four walls of Playbook Circuit Makati’s establishment was rocked by the deafening cheers of more than a hundred members of the country’s fighting game community – all for the celebration of the much-awaited launch of Tekken 7. 

The launch was met with a friendly yet competitive tournament. From 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, June 3, more than a hundred participants battled each other for the lion’s share of P100,000 – half of which came from the tens of thousands of viewers watching on Twitch, while the other half came from sponsors and organizers.

The competition started with the group stages where the goal was to whittle down the large number of players into the top 16. To make the competition a little more interesting, two of the best Tekken players in the world, Echofox Saint and Echofox JDCR flew all the way from Korea to participate and to take stock of the talent pool in the Philippines. 

The entire event was livestreamed on Twitch with Team Spooky providing commentary for the fans who were present online. As the day went by, the organizers raffled away premium giveaways to lucky participants. They also gave pizza and energy drinks for everyone while they waited for the results. 

Suffice to say that the day was a grueling one with every participant eager to win first place or at least get a chance to beat the Korean players and Filipinos pros present. But most of the best battles happened during the Finals stage where the top 8 players’ performances had most of the audience at the edge of their seat, cheering their lungs out. 

One of the highlights of the day was PBE Doujin’s triumph over Echofox Saint. For this particularly tense battle, he used Kazumi against every character that Saint brought out. As expected, the Filipino crowd rose to their feet as Doujin did what many have been hoping for since the day began: prove that the Filipino fighting game community has what it takes to compete against the best of the world. 

Doujin defeats Saint and moves on to the finals! He will now go up against AK! #RageArt pic.twitter.com/dD91BIGCyD

— Nadine P. (@naddzie) June 3, 2017

But his victory also meant that he’d have to go against his own teammate PBE AK. AK, considered one of the most formidable players in the local scene brought out Marshall Law and Paul. Doujin on the other hand used Hwoarang. After a tense back and forth between the two teammates, it was Doujin who came out on top and would go on to face JDCR for coveted first place prize. 

While JDCR had an easy time moving up the ladder, Doujin made sure that he would bring up a fight. While Doujin had much success using Kazumi, he decided to also bring in Jack and his signature character Lars for the final match. Doujin not only took a few rounds from JDCR, he also did not allow JDCR to sweep the entire fight. 

After JDCR’s win, the top 8 players were awarded medals and trophies, with the audience singing and cheering for them. But at the end of the day the real winners of the tournament seemed to be the Filipino fighting game community in its entirety, who not only had the chance to meet and greet the top players in the world but also got to show the world their talent and passion for games like Tekken 7. – Rappler.com